looks like a mask worn, taut
over the face on the train then
on a flight, all of ten thousand
kilometres to eat dinner in a
separate room from your
family, like the growing familiarity
of faces flattened, and stacked
against darkened windows, like
the slow considering of beauty
in a film you haven’t seen, voices
sharing in wonder and
bemusement.
it looks like two cups of peach
tea, hung on the spikes of a
metal gate, like bundles of
laddu and instant coffee
ferried across an island, like
walking away from a chance
to sing for fear of unseen
symptoms, like two weeks in
a service apartment spent
learning, each day, to share
with shrinking space. it looks
like the breaking of the air,
drawn in deeper breaths,
expanding in the caverns
of unencumbered presence.
Photo: Jonathan Chan (2020)
Poet Bio
Home?
Singapore (and sometimes the US and South Korea)
What is home to you?
While I have counted New York, Houston, Seoul, and Cambridge as homes, the pandemic has clarified that Singapore is home for me.
Jonathan Chan is a recent graduate from Cambridge University. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore, where he is presently based. He is interested in questions of faith, creative expression, and identity. He has recently been moved by the writing of Eugene Peterson, Robert Macfarlane, and Jamaica Kincaid. His writing has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Ekstasis Magazine, and Cha: An Asian Literary journal.
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